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Why I Returned My Apple Watch

Last week my wife surprised me with a trip to the Apple Store to purchase an Apple Watch. Ultimately I decided to return the watch, but let’s start with the positives.

Positives

During my time with Apple Watch I did appreciate getting notifications on my wrist. It was convenient to be able to see important notifications without having to pull my phone out of my pocket. Having Siri on my wrist was also a plus, however, it is not always appropriate (in public) or feasible (in a noisy environment) to talk to your wrist. The battery life was also good, always lasting me a whole day (even when spending time playing with it).

Negatives

With the limited capability of a small screen for input, Apple Watch relies heavily on Siri for capturing text. While I found Siri to work well, the usefulness was greatly diminished in noisy locations (even just at home with the TV on). Also working a corporate job in a cube, Siri provided me no utility during the work day.

Apple Watch also seems slow: glances don’t update in a timely fashion and apps need to load before most interactions can occur. For me, the glances are a key feature. Without regular and reliable updates of the glances, I cannot depend on being able to quickly check the weather or see if I have any upcoming tasks in OmniFocus. I’m sure watchOS updates will improve the overall slowness, but I’m not willing to take the chance that it might take a hardware revision.

Interaction is also an issue for me. I really like the Digital Crown and wish it was available for more interactions. I find hitting the right touch target on the screen difficult sometimes, and can think of many ways the Digital Crown could make things easier.

Health Features

With a heart rate monitor, Apple Watch has the potential to be a better workout companion than the standard step tracker. In reality, it’s not. Let’s get something straight first though: no “fitness tracker” will ever accurately measure your calorie burn (and as for intake, a calorie is not just a calorie).

The step tracker portion of Apple Watch seems to work as well as any other device, however, the heart rate monitor falls short. I found it to be slow when using it during a run.

One of the software features other users have been talking about is the Activity feature (concentric circles that fill based on movement, exercise, and standing). I was disappointed to find that only activity measured with the watch counted towards these goals (this will change with watchOS 2).

Overall, Apple Watch is a fine step tracker, but it doesn’t provide anything more (in my mind at least) than the cheaper options on the market. For serious fitness, we still lack a good way to track strength training, and for heart rate monitoring, a chest monitor works better.

Turning Point

After getting over the gadget nerd excitement and newness of Apple Watch, I started to think about the value I was getting out of my interactions with the watch. Is it really worth $450 to be able to check notifications and interact with Siri on my wrist? Ultimately the decision was no, or at least not yet. Looking back at the first iPhone, I see a future of great improvements for Apple Watch. I’m sure all my issues will be ironed out and I will be a believer in the future.